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Blinkbox put up for sale

UK retail giant Tesco is considering shutting down its video streaming service Blinkbox unless it can find a buyer.

Tesco took a majority stake in the VoD company in 2011, but the CEO who oversaw the supermarket’s push into online video, Philip Clarke, was ousted from the company over the summer amid poor financial performance.

Clarke has since been replaced at the top by Dave Lewis, who told senior Blinkbox staff on Friday that he wants rid of the loss-making business, either through sale or closure, according to UK newspaper The Times.

Tesco is in hot water with its shareholders after it emerged last month that it had overstated its half-year profits by £250m (US$405m) and new CEO Lewis could see selling Blinkbox off as one way of plugging that financial black hole.

Earlier this week Tesco shut down its short-lived free VoD service Clubcard TV, which offered content from the likes of Warner Bros, Endemol, DRG and All3Media to its loyalty card customers.

Blinkbox, a transactional VoD platform, allows customers to rent or buy Hollywood movies and series such as The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and True Detective. However, unlike US firms such as Netflix and Amazon that operate in the UK, Blinkbox has not made the push into producing its own original content.

The company was set up by former Channel 4 executive Michael Comish with former Vodafone group head of content services Adrian Letts in 2007.

Comish, who was promoted by Tesco to the new position of CEO of Tesco Digital Entertainment in 2012, is expected to stay with the company.

He could not be reached before press time, while a spokesman for Blinkbox declined to comment.

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